NOAA Research AA visits ARL

NOAA Research Assistant Administrator visits the Air Research Lab

May 11, 2026

ARL planned hands-on activities demonstrating some of the lab’s work during a visit by Steven Thur, the Assistant Administrator for NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (NOAA Research), on Wednesday.

A group of people talking and eating lunch around a small conference table. — Dr. Thur visits with early career scientists and interns at ARL during a brown bag lunch. Credit: NOAA/ARL

The visit started with a brown-bag lunch with early career staff and interns who were interested to hear about Dr. Thur’s background and what led to his current work. He also shared advice about leadership and encouraged them to take advantage of any opportunity to build their skills around speaking about their work to non-technical audiences.

After lunch, Howard Diamond, ARL’s Atmospheric Sciences and Modeling Division Director brought him up to the roof of the NCWCP building where one of ARL’s five UrbanNet towers is located. Each tower collects meteorological measurements such as wind speed/direction, atmospheric pressure, temperature and precipitation, among others. The real time data from that tower is available online and can be found on the dashboard here.

Five people on a roof with a cloudy sky above them. They are standing on a grated platform facing one man who is speaking. — Howard Diamond talks about the UrbanNet tower on top of the NOAA building in College Park. Credit: NOAA

Two men stand facing the open side door of a panel van. One man points towards a rack of scientific instruments while the other looks on. — ARL Scientist Xinrong Ren shows off sensors mounted inside the new Air Resources Car. Credit: NOAA

Dr. Thur also experienced the new iteration of the Air Resources Car (ARC) on a ride-along with Physical Scientist Xinrong Ren to measure methane emissions around the Brown Station Landfill in Prince George’s County. This information will be used as part of the Brown Station Landfill Experiment, a joint field study with UMD, Howard University, the Maryland Department of the Environment and the landfill operator. ARL regularly brings the ARC on this trip to make measurements under different environmental conditions and while different work is going on at the landfill. This work provides information to support the landfill operator in finding ways to reduce methane emissions.

Back at the lab, the final activity was led by HYSPLIT Group Lead Alice Crawford. She walked through several customized applications of the HYSPLIT model, demonstrating uses for national security and public safety. HYSPLIT is one of the most commonly used transport and dispersion models in the atmospheric sciences community. It is used to forecast the trajectory of airborne hazardous materials. Using meteorological data, the model computes the most likely path of travel from a starting point and can forecast concentrations of the airborne material and how much might settle to the ground along the way.